Casualties of War (1989)
Directed by Brian De Palma
During the Vietnam War, a soldier finds himself the outsider of his own squad when they unnecessarily kidnap a female villager.
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What critics compared Casualties of War to
Consider also these titles: " Sisters ," " Blow Out ," " The Fury ," " Dressed to Kill ," " Carrie ," " Scarface ," " Wise Guys ," " Casualties of War ," " Carlito's Way ," " Mission: Impossible ."
This makes him seem cheap and synthetic when he's compared with Hitchcock (as he most commonly is) or with the Italian neorealists and other humanist filmmakers (as he was by Kael for his Casualties of War).
Like Schindlers List, GoodFellas, The Pianist, and Casualties of War, Meirelles window into Brazils dark underbelly reminds us of the anarchy that surfaces when the price of human life hits rock bottom.
Sex and war blended together make for some bending ethics, but here, something that should be chilling or at least edgily disturbing, is rendered banal and inert like a bunch of insipid frat boys at a “Girls Gone Wild“ festival—a plumbing of morality that Brian de Palma tapped so piquantly in the unheralded war contemplation, Casualties of War.
Sayuri (Zhang) is a blue-eyed girl kidnapped, in a soft-sold version of the abduction in Casualties of War , from her parents' fishing hovel and sold to a house whose business it is to train Geisha and introduce them into service as living pieces of art for the gratification of rich businessmen.
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Since "Casualties of War" in '89, his only film to entertain me was the self-reflexive "Snake Eyes", which nobody but me and maybe three other people liked.
There are always at least moments of excellence in many of his films like Sisters (1973), Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980), Blow Out (1981), Scarface (1983), Casualties of War (1989), Raising Cain (1992), Mission: Impossible (1996), and Snake Eyes (1998).